Five Growth Strategies Every Entrepreneur Should Consider

Running a business is a lot like working out: you have to put in the time, effort, and investment in order to see the results you want. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Growth strategies that helped jump start your business from day one may not be the same strategies that will help you scale your company moving forward. So here are five growth strategies to consider:

Really Get to Know Your Customers

Nothing is worse than being a solution looking for a problem to solve. Rather, it should be the other way around – you’ve developed a solution for challenges that currently exist for your target customer base. The importance of scaling your company is to ensure that you deeply understand ‘who’ your target customers are, what their pain points are, and how you can alleviate them.

Be able to specifically answer the following questions about your target customers:

Which problems do they face on a daily basis?

Where do they go to consume content online in their industry?

What are the top social media networks they use?

What are key phrases they use to find a solution like yours when doing a Google search?

Make Your Blog a Priority

After you’ve budgeted time and money to everything else, it’s easy to let your company’s blog sit on the back burner.

Don’t let that happen. Keeping up with your blog on a regular basis improves your search engine ranking across the board. More specifically, here are a few stats by HubSpot that show why blogging should be a high priority:

B2B companies that blogged 11+ times per month had almost 3X more traffic than those blogging 0-1 times per month.

B2C companies that blogged 11+ times per month got more than 4X as many leads than those that blog only 4-5 times per month.

Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got about 4.5X more leads than companies that published 0-4 monthly posts.

Experiment with Different Content

Besides just blogging, push to repurpose and even develop content for videos as they can provide a more authentic view of the people behind your company – further having a positive impact on fostering your business objectives. More specifically, it is important to know that:

Look at Zappos, for example. It’s not the right place for every worker, but the workers who do fit in are able to thrive and grow with the company. They make every effort possible to ensure that each worker exudes the Zappos vibe. Zappos accomplishes this by:

Giving raises based on skill advancement

Completing team-building activities and events within each department

Creating career paths in each department

Having workers participate in re-formatting the company culture

Sure, you probably don’t have all the same resources as Zappos, but you have to start somewhere. So, take your mission statement and corporate culture seriously.

Stay Dynamic

Your customers are always changing so your growth strategies should stay dynamic, too. It’s important to explore your growth strategies objectively: know when to give up and when to try something new. If something isn’t working – stop doing it.

Take risks and experiment with new campaigns to better understand what’s driving the best results. Make sure you also identify your KPIs (key performance indicators) to know exactly what you’re tracking and best judge the results of each execution.

Final Thoughts

Growth strategies may differ across various companies and industries, but one thing stands true: you have to continue testing and have to be persistent in order to drive the best results. More importantly, make sure you are stubborn with your goals but flexible in your approach. Doing so will enable you to stick with a clear strategy and roadmap but be nimble with your tactical executions. With this in mind, you will be able to easily pivot when needed to make the most impact for business growth.

About The Author

Neil Zola

As an Executive Co-Chairman of JND Legal Administration, Neil has made it his priority to be involved in all aspects of the business. Over the course of his career, Neil has personally overseen dozens of the largest legal administration projects in our country's history, including the Auction Houses Antitrust Litigation, BP Deepwater Horizon Settlement, IPO Securities Litigation, Visa/Mastercard Antitrust Litigation and Worldcom Securities Litigation. Neil has testified in many courts throughout the country on class action settlement matters and has written numerous articles on the subject. He also is an inventor of a patented electronic claims filing system. Neil is sought after to consult on a multitude of legal administration matters and to speak on class action issues. Prior to forming JND, between 2000 and 2015, Neil held positions as general counsel, chief operating officer, and president at one of the then largest legal administration firms in the country. Before this, Neil was a partner with a boutique litigation firm in New York City where he handled complex litigation matters for nearly 10 years. Neil earned his J.D. from UCLA School of Law, where he has served on the board of the Alumni Association and has been a featured speaker in their Distinguished Alumni Lecturer Series. He received his B.A., cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania. Neil was recently featured on "Worldwide Business" with Kathy Ireland.